I’ve mentioned this earlier (perhaps in this thread), but I don’t think it’s realistic to project winning the gold cup to success in road qualifying games. In the gold cup, the players had several weeks of practice and games to develop chemistry. Here, they have a few days. And they were playing on the road, which makes a very, very big difference. I have plenty of issues with Berhalter’s lineup decisions this window and how he has worked to develop cohesion on the field, but there’s a clear drop in proven quality between basically all the guys you mentioned and the Reynas, Mickennies, and Dests who are proven contributors for good teams in top leagues. Scally is the only one who compares, and he’s an 18 year old with two months as a starter.
Please show me highlights of all the attacks he killed off. If you look at the Pepi goal, Arriola also made a run inside to create space for Dest on the wing. this board rightfully criticized berhalter for producing stagnant offenses with inadequate off-ball movement, but when Arriola provides quality movement, you can’t just say, “good game from average player”, you have to downplay it as running in a straight line and falling down. Using your own logic, Weah did nothing but produce an off-target shot against Costa Rica.
No US goalkeeper should be any central part of the plan for “the US possession game.” That’s ridiculous. And Steffan’s turnovers have caused multiple goals, including against Mexico. He may be better than Turner with the ball at his feet, but not by much. He’s below average stop in that area.
Oh wow! He made a run into space! How impressive! That’s always the most reaching, embarrassing argument for praising an attacker who had nothing significant to do with a goal. Those plays don’t make the highlights, but more than once he tried to cut inside in space but only lost the ball. At what point did he do anything dangerous in a game where we dominated and fed him the ball constantly?
Goalkeepers don't have to be Pirlo, midfielders do, they just have pass well under pressure. Just like you can't lose your job to injury, you can't lose to Covid protocols. Can't wait til Turner cause the team undue stress with his punt first approach.
The issue with your first point I have is that wasn't part of the point of leaning on proven players like Lleget and Acosta in the gold cup TO give them experience working together for their inevitable WCQs appearances? I feel like that was the idea behind giving so many minutes to proven commodities (and yes we did see Sands and Busio in the midfield, but we coulda seen even more new faces all over the field). I feel like from a holistic point of view Berhalter completely messed up that decision. He overrated the talent of some of these guys, wanted to give them the keys to the Gold Cup to prepare them for their duties in WCQ, gave them their chance in Panama, and they just completely crapped the bed with a poor performance.
I’m in the camp that says McKennie should not always be an automatic starter. Yes, I know. He’s one of our better players. But does he automatically start every game? I’m not so sure. Occasionally sitting him might actually help him.
I disagree about McKennie. Have you considered his stat line? He was 88% accurate on his passes. 58 were in the opposition half and he had 16 recoveries… 16! That’s 3x of Tyler Adams and more than Adams/Musah combined. Him having the night off vs Panama was probably the single biggest impact. More so that the eternally applauded Tyler Adams, who actually was on the field half of that match. I like both players immensely. Adams is the safety valve and McKennie is going to try things. There are times when his end product could be a lot better but I don’t think we should underestimate the simple things he makes look easy and ground he covers in transition.
We sat him against Panama and look at the result there. We even had Adams play half the match. It’s going to be hard to sit a player that gives you 16 recoveries per match. I think until we find another super star in transition then we need McKennie at the 8.
Well, if you focus on the result, how the goals were created, and control of the game by the US in general, you would walk away optimistic that a young team reacted well and showed something. However, if you focus on giving up an early goal at home, sloppy passing (looking at you McKennie) in general, and horrible crossing, you would not be confident with this team against better teams. This was by far the worst Costa Rica team that I have seen in a long time. They were slow and lacked fire. May be it was the third game in a series and older team. Will see how they react at home. Back to McKennie, he has taken a step back for me. His decision making has become more inconsistent (trending to more poor) and attempting to be a deep playmaker is not good for the USMNT (better in the final third because he can still recover from poor passes). I would like to stick with Turner in goal. He has been overall more consistent. I continue to be a big Pepe fan. He may not have contributed a goal or assist, but he did a lot on the defensive side, had some nice flicks, and continues to have good movement. Still not sold on our defense. Our centerbacks were shaky (poor distribution), not sold on Dest as a defender, and while I don't want to switch Robinson, he gets out of position too much and his crossing has been generally poor (need better against bunkering teams).
I started going back through matches, that 58 successful passes in our opponent's half is insane. In some games, all 3 of our starting mids don't combine for that many. He was also 11/12 on long balls! Nobody in our pool comes close to that currently.
I think this might explain why Pulisic has had issues and how exciting it might be in the future if everyone's healthy. Midfield 2021 trends mentioned in video:1) Started with Adams once2) Has played w/ double pivot (which has been terrible for us) or Lleget as left sided 8 EVERY GAME3) Has never started with 2 of MMA midfield at once4) Acosta in midfield 5/6 gamesThoughts?— USMNT_STAN (@StanUsmnt) October 13, 2021
Making a run behind the defense that should’ve drawn a red card is doing something dangerous. When has Weah ever produced a lot of dangerous moments for the US? He has two goals in like 15 appearances, and was just as bad as anyone else against Panama. And I actually like Weah pretty well. It’s just absurd how you and a few others are trying to put him on a pedestal when his performances for the US have been a mixed bag. If he were as good as you suggest, he would’ve done more against Panama. But he’s not that good, which is why berhalter playing him with so many other weaker players (including Arriola) against Panama was such a mistake.
Arriola doesnt have a goal or an assist in a competive match since June 2019. He is on a streak of 9 matches (ALL STARTS) 642 minutes, 0 goals, 0 assists. Sorry, he has lost his spot, or at least should.
I'm not sure McKennie has taken a step back. I think up until now people were evaluating him based on potential/projection as opposed to the here and now. He actually hasn't had many impressive performances in a USMNT jersey against "good" teams. Its going to be REALLY interesting to see who sits when Pulisic and Reyna come back healthy. Cuz it could be McKennie..........................
Going back to age, young players tend to be less consistent match to match than more experienced heads. And Berhalter deserves a bit of a break. This condensed qualifying format necessitates squad rotation, whereas in a normal qualifying year I would hope we'd have a settled first XI by now. I didn't comment after the Panama game because I didn't want to get caught up in "I told ya so's" but I think Arriola got a bad rap. He got absolutely no service from Shaq Moore or the midfield and ran his ass off trying to (but failing to), make something happen. He's still way down the depth order but if you need an old head when you're hanging onto a lead, he could be a useful sub.
Arriola did already lose his spot. Raise your hand if you think he's in this squad if Pulisic and Reyna are healthy. Seems to me that Berhalter doesn't yet trust de la Fuente.
Far point. I was thinking back to the summer tournaments where one of them he put the team on his back and was probably the MVP in my mind.
I think he is. He would get in over someone like Hoppe in that case for sure. I think he keeps his spot until Morris is back 100% or some other circumstance Berhalter has no choice about (injury, extreme drop in form for Arriola, or extreme rise in form for another winger)
He was involved in the buildup to the first goal last night and scored the winner. Even if you write it off as an own goal, he obviously forced it. I'd call that producing dangerous moments.
Agreed. I would fault the defense shape more. After Steffen came out, everyone in defense kind of had a brain fart and just stood around watching.
To expand on this a bit in terms of this game, the core of this CR team WAS one of the great defensive sides in World Cups I've seen. Also as some of us know the last skill to go is marking in tight spaces, so it's not that surprising that getting off that final ball was tough. Our goals really came from speed and skill not mental or positional errors by CR. If our guys can start to really log some time on the pitch together the final balls will (hopefully) improve.
Steffan's mistake on the goal was not clearing his header out of play. The shot a few seconds later was the aftereffect of that mistake and wasn't particularly egregious on a play where everything fell apart from that first moment.